To self-publish or not to publish. That is the question. The decision hasn’t been difficult. What has been (and still is) difficult is everything that comes with becoming an indie author. That is: becoming an author/publisher. I could have kept it simple, publishing with KDP/Amazon, promoting myself on Instagram, and Bob’s your uncle. But no sir. I want the hard stuff, apparently. Why the hell? Not sure, at this stage (the actual answer is I want wide distribution). But look, this is already underway, and no one can stop me now. Especially after all the stress and anxiety that’s eaten away at me to set it all up.
For those interested in becoming an indie author (publishing without a traditional publisher), I’m going to give a detailed summary of everything I’ve had to do to get where I am (I need your shoulder to cry on). If you don’t give a damn about the self-publishing world, you can stop by my shop and get a paperback copy of My Shit and finish reading here.
For those of you still here, what I’m about to write below is not, by any means, discouragement for you to forget about the idea of indie publishing. In fact, counterintuitively, it’s quite the opposite. If I, who am a fucking dummy in everything related to computers, who gets anxious about subscribing to online payment services, who is overwhelmed by the absurd variety of companies offering the same thing out there, have done it, you, who are undoubtedly smarter and more knowledgeable in computer matters than yours truly, will own this shit, no doubt. I present to you my nightmare of the last few months:
Do you want to be an indie author and be read? Ready, set…?
Read your thousands of short stories stored on lost hard drives and get depressed by their mediocrity.
Rescue the ones worth sharing and reading. Edit them. Send them to your beta-readers for constructive critique. Acknowledge the critique and edit again. Repeat as many times as necessary.
Collect the best ones. Create an anthology you can give away as a reader magnet.
Decide the order of the stories. So far, so good. Now comes the torture.
Typeset the book. In my case, after trying many free online services that do the layout automatically (KDP, IngramSpark, D2D, Reedsy…) and being deeply disappointed with all of them, I had to decide whether to learn how to use InDesign or Scribus to typeset the book myself or hire someone on Fiver to do it. The latter, thank you. Pro tip: hire someone fluent in a language you also speak. Maghchich, the Moroccan colleague I hired for a modest fee, has appeared in my worst nightmares in a kind of Lost in Translation of Castilian-Maghrebi horror. After a week of back-and-forth emails, of not understanding each other, of shouting at the moon with suppressed rage, we achieved an excellent result (although I’m a little balder today).
Design the cover of the book (front, back, and spine). Thank you, Canva. This part was actually fun. I shared the work with my partner Eva, who suffered as much, or more, as I did (she had to put up with me) during the entire process. I’m really happy with the final design.
Get your work copywrited. Register your book in the intellectual property registry (optional) at your provincial registry (€13). Alternatively, you can give your work a Creative Commons licence.
Request ISBNs for the books. One for the electronic version and one for the paperback version. €45 each. 90 bucks for both (in Spain). Alternatively, if you are exclusive to KDP, IngramSpark, D2D, Lulu, or any other self-publishing company, you can get “free” fake ISBNs (only valid on their platforms). Less professional, but less of a fuss and cheaper.
Make the Legal Deposit (only for Spain). Request the number from the Central Library of your Autonomous Community. When you have it, print four books and deposit them at the library (it’s normal to send the proofs so you can actually use them).
In the meantime, find the printing company/publisher that best suits you. Explore KDP (Amazon), IngramSpark (brick and mortar bookshop distribution), Bookvault, Lulu, Bubok, D2D, Google Play Books, Apple Books, Kobo Writing Life, Bookfunnel, Story Origin… The list is endless. Choose what suits you best, based on the printing price per book, print quality, shipping price, royalties you earn from each sale, wide distribution, etc. Get out your calculator and do lots of additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions. Upload your book on the platforms (not as straightforward as you might think) and request proofs to make a final decision. Be, negatively, surprised when you have to pay the postman an extra customs fee to receive one of your own books because it’s coming from outside the EU (in my case, the UK). Choose the one you like best (which will also depend on the price of each copy and all the variables mentioned above).
Learn how to pay taxes, the enemy of humanity according to neoliberals, on the books you haven’t yet sold (4% VAT on books in Spain). Go crazy, wondering if you should become self-employed, if you can continue working as an employee, if you have to declare your royalties to the tax office, if… You’ll have a thousand questions (and rightly so). This translates into lots YouTube, lots of blog reading, lots of internet surfing.
Prepare a strategy for your first book. Are you going to give it away to attract readers? Are you going to sell it cheaply? Will you publish it in print and eBook? Will you sell it online, on Amazon, in person, at bookfairs, at your local bookshop, or on your website’s online shop? Turn this over in your mind until it becomes an obsession and Mr Migraine feels at home in the old grey matter.
Find a good mailing company so you can create an email list and keep your potential readers informed of your future publications (there’s MailChimp, Kit, Mailerlite, etc.). Think about how you’re going to collect those emails. Perhaps giving away your book in digital format… you’ll have to set all of this up on your writer’s website (what, writer’s website? Yes, writer’s website). Automating welcome emails, book delivery/downloads, and all those little things that, in the normal life of the average person, we don’t give a damn about, but will give you a headache (one after another).
Meanwhile, aha!, create your writer’s website (find hosting and a domain name tailored to your budget). Decide how you’re going to build your website. If you want to have a shop where you can sell your books, you’ll need plugins (apps) so that all the services you’ve hired integrate with the website. This is where the climax of the nightmare begins. Because I built my website with WordPress (not known for its user-friendliness). I cried every day editing the bloody website. After hundreds of hours in front of screens, dozens of YouTube tutorials, I still don’t understand a thing. It seems like they made it complicated on purpose. And when you get to setting up the WooCommerce shop… my tears were of bile. So many integrations, so many tests, so many failures. I, a fiction writer, had to use code to fix errors and bugs. Fucking hell, what a bloody pain in the nether region! Could I have hired someone to do it for me? Yes. Why didn’t I? Because I’m an idiot. Now I understand why people do this professionally. Above all, I understand why people pay for this service. At least I’ve learned a lot (or not, I don’t even know!).
And when you finally think you’ve got it all, something will break. And you’ll fix it. And something else will break. And you’ll fix it. And you’ll realise you haven’t started promoting your book on social media… Have I told you how much I love social media? As much as taking a dump in a club when you’re partying.
Anyway. Buy my book.
A big hug,
Dave.
